National FFA Week
Published 9:31 am Monday, February 21, 2011
GLENVILLE — Even though one in three students at Glenville-Emmons High School are already members of FFA, members would like to add more students to the organization.
National FFA Week starts today with the focus being to garner interest about the organization and teach students what it’s all about. FFA used to stand for Future Farmers of America, and is now called The National FFA Organization to reflect the changes they’ve made in what members learn. Instead of only agriculture education, the organization wants to teach students about a range of careers.
“It gets kids into realizing FFA isn’t just for farm kids,” G-E FFA historian Kendra Davis said.
Trent Thoms, a junior at G-E and the chapter sentinel, said the FFA group will try to get the whole school excited about the organization.
“Hopefully we’ll get more to join throughout the year,” Thoms said.
Activities for the week include dress up days, an event during the last two class periods on Friday and a dance Saturday night. The dress up days include wearing your favorite truck or tractor clothes on Tuesday, western clothes on Wednesday, wearing pajamas or a Snuggie on Thursday and Friday is casual dress or donning FFA official jackets and clothes for FFA members.
Also during the week there will be trivia questions about FFA for all students, and winners will get a chance to win popcorn.
The Friday event at the end of the day for all students will include many different kinds of activities including a butter carving contest, a corn on the cob eating contest, potato sack races and a pedal tractor contest. Another event will include many students who will be assigned an animal noise to make, who must then make that noise and find the other student who was assigned that same animal noise.
“We’re pretty excited for FFA week,” Davis said. “It’s a good opportunity to and teaches you a lot about agriculture.”
Davis said the G-E FFA is active throughout the year. In March the group plans to visit elementary students to teach them about FFA and agriculture, and they’ll also have an agriculture safety event in March.
Members also participate in various competitions like parliamentary procedure, public prepared speaking, fish and wildlife education, general livestock judging and so much more.